The American Prospect

A monthly political journal of liberal though. Contains articles that generate debate, further ideas, and set agendas; and provides a forum for working through the controversies and hard choices facing all Americans. Includes regular topics and features.

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Articles from Vol. 12, No. 10, June 4

Air Piracy

The predatory pricing of big airlines often drives upstart competitors from a route--or out of business entirely. The latest news about the deregulated airline industry leaves little hope that the American flying experience will rise above its sub-Greyhound...

In early April, a group of prominent African-American businessmen led by Black Entertainment Television mogul Robert Johnson ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times and The Washington Post calling for an end to the estate tax. What was...

It's not My Lai, for God's sake. --BOB KERREY, New York Post, April 26, 2001 In the days after the real story of Bob Kerrey's military exploits in Vietnam emerged, the former Democratic senator occasionally forgot that he was supposed to seem...

Imagine that you're Senator Tom Daschle. You have two somewhat conflicting goals. One is to block the worst parts of the Bush program, this year. The other is to move down the hall to the big office, the one that says Majority Leader instead of Minority...

MAMA'S DELICATE CONDITION TO THE EDITORS: I've followed with interest your debate about acting Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, who is pregnant with twins [TAP, May 7, 2001]. I'd be thrilled to have as governor a woman who was also the mother...

For congressional Democrats, losing the White House meant the loss of more than the president's veto power over Republican-sponsored legislation. It also left the Democrats without a central idea factory and place to commune with the Democratic Party's...

As the film debut of The Fellowship of the Ring approaches, is J.R.R. Tolkien worthy of inclusion in the literary canon? When it comes to the fantasy novels of J.R.R. Tolkien, it is a truism at critics either love the books or e them: Concerning...

In recent years, nearly a dozen local governments--cities, counties, and even school districts--have brought lawsuits against paint manufacturers, charging that lead-based paint has created costly public-health problems, especially affecting children....

Grant-making foundations distributed $27.6 billion last year, much of it ostensibly devoted to social change. Ultimately, all such grants must be approved by foundation trustees; and the typical foundation board is dominated by business and civic leaders....

Like many museums that deal with hot-button history, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center agonizes over content and presentation. In the mythology of the Underground Railroad, the Ohio River has a sacramental status. Crossing it transformed...

In April 20, a federal judge named Charles Pannell, Jr., barred Houghton Mifflin from publishing Alice Randall's novel The Wind Done Gone--a takeoff on Gone With the Wind from a slave's perspective--on the grounds that the book's borrowings of characters...

Discussion of world population issues has taken some strange twists lately. First there was that slip of the tongue by Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Coalition, who in an interview with CNN on April 16 seemed to give his blessing to China's...

Protecting civil liberties is an exercise in deja vu. On March 20, 2001, for the third time in five-years, the American Civil berries Union filed suit in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia seeking to enjoin a federal law aimed at protecting...

In late March, when the National Association of Broadcasters held its annual Futures Summit in Pebble Beach, California, the assembled pack of Wall Street financial-analyst invitees presented the broadcasters with an astonishing but presumably welcome...

Here's the best news to come out of the otherwise screwed-up 2000 election: The political juggernaut that during the last third of the twentieth century transformed the states from staunch foes of gambling into gambling's chief sponsors has slowed...

TAX CHEATERS' LOBBY If you ever entertain doubts about whether the so-called conservative movement in America is run by lunatics, consider this: The far right's latest cause is promoting international tax cheating by corporations and the wealthy....

It was, on the whole, an unusual display of Democratic solidarity. On April 27, all nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee--backed, according to ranking member Patrick Leahy, by the entire Democratic caucus--signed a letter to White House...

The Merchant Ivory film adaptation of The Golden Bowl is principally an exercise in embellishment and the making of spectacle. Lewis Carroll and Henry James haven't much in common, although the cinematic pursuit of the latter seems a bit like the...

Virtually all the leaders who met in Quebec to expand trade were democratically elected, while `the people' in the streets clamoring for `justice' were self-appointed or paid union activists. --THOMAS FRIEDMAN, New York Times, April 24, 2001 ...

Lessons from Success Stories in Health Americans know, all too well, what is wrong with health care. Ask the single mother who waits half a day in a crowded clinic for a five-minute visit with a harried physician, or the unemployed worker who has...